Intel is no stranger to lawsuits. The
company was slapped with a $1.45B
USD fine by the EU in May of this year for anticompetitive
practices. The charges leveled against Intel mainly focused on
illegal methods Intel used to keep AMD from gaining in traction in
the marketplace.

At the time, EU competition
commissioner Neelie Kroes noted that, "[Intel used] used illegal
anticompetitive practices to exclude its only competitor and reduce
consumers’ choice — and the whole story is about consumers."

The Santa Clara, CA-based company later
appealed
the ruling with Intel spokesman Chuck Malloy saying, "Our
position is that the decision was wrong and we said that from the day
it was announced. It was wrong on many levels."

Now it appears that Intel is facing
another lawsuit -- this time on its own home soil according to the
New York Times. New York attorney general Andrew M. Cuomo is
going after Intel this time with a federal antitrust lawsuit. Like
the aforementioned EU case, Cuomo asserts that Intel used illegal
tactics to stifle AMD.

“Rather than compete fairly, Intel
used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market,”
said Cuomo. “Intel’s actions not only unfairly restricted
potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers who were
robbed of better products and lower prices.”

The NYT adds that the state of
NY's action against Intel could mean that the FTC could step in as
well with charges of its own. "These are separate
investigations, but it would be very surprising for New York State to
go off on its own without being fairly confident the FTC would pursue
Intel as well," a person familiar with the situation told the
NYT.

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You have completely missed the point. Which has not the slightest thing to do with pricing.

It has to do with Intel bribing OEM manufacturers to use their chips instead of AMD. Or providing illegal kickbacks. Or threatening to shortfall their CPU orders if they used AMD too. Or any number of clearly illegal tactics to prevent OEM manufacturers from pursuing relationships with AMD.

Reclaimer your an idiot. I live in New York, and I can tell you that really has nothing to do with it. Is the state hurting for money? 'Course, they all are. I do believe money from this will go to the Federal government.

Intel didn't "bribe" or "kickback" anyone. They "threatened". Still Bribery and Kickbacks would be illegal yes if they were for personal gain and/or at the expense of the shareholders. Hence the need for protection and legislation against that kind of behavior.

If if you disregard all this and refuse to accept it, you have to remember that in business there are a set of rules just like there are in sport. Now Intel is an old time player so it can't use the excuse that it wasn't aware of the rules. So maybe Intel may not like those rules that much but if it doesn't play by them it is more than welcome to take its ball elsewhere, but it has to get off the pitch.

Of course in your world my team bribing the referee and giving him a nice kickback to swing the game in our favor by penalizing the opposing team is perfectly acceptable.

They may not have been convicted yet, but that doesn't mean that they didn't do anything. It simply hasn't been proven in a court of law.

You can presume their innocence, but clearly the state of New York and the Federal Trade Commission believe that they can prove that the law was broken.

However the action in question must have already occured. You can't put someone on trial for something they have not yet done. So yes, they did do something. It is just a matter of proving that that something was illegal.

Not to be too niggling, but it's alleged that something was done, it is not certain. That is what the case is about. It is both to affirm that something was done, and that that action was, in fact, illegal. Both are required. For example, it could be demonstrated that the actions did in fact occur, but the defense could in theory prove that the email was a joke or revenge, etc.

Also (to the posting earlier), insider trading has nothing to do with this at all, and does not necessarily bleed a company. In fact, there are situations where it can significantly benefit. The point of making insider trading illegal is that it's unfair, which is harmful to the markets in general. "Because insider trading undermines investor confidence in the fairness and integrity of the securities markets, the SEC has treated the detection and prosecution of insider trading violations as one of its enforcement priorities." - http://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm

An example of where a company would benefit is if the market suddenly sees a a bull run on a stock (insiders illegally buying based on non-public knowledge) and everyone jumps in, pushing up the value. As this was (unbeknownst to the public) based on actual good news, the stock stays high. This means the company profits from the delta between where the stock was and where it is now for the period of time of the increase until the 'insider information' becomes public knowledge.

It probably wouldn't matter much if threatening someone didn't matter. Why does it matter? Simply because AMD does not compete well enough in certain areas that would leave a hole in the OEM's system offerings.

AMD were extremely competitive in the Athlon/Pentium 4 days. AMD took the performance crown as far as gamers were concerned. I'm sure OEM's useage of AMD processors would have soared if not for the fact that Intel were so corrupt.

Instead of using their time to make something better and actually compete with AMD on a fair playing field, they preferred to use that time to act like the school bully and pick on those it felt it had power over.

If you weren't so small minded, you would realise that it was Intel's anti-competitveness that caused AMD to stop being as competitive as they once were.

Who knows how AMD would have faired if none of this never happened?

P.S. I am a huge fan of Intel processors, and I'm not sayng AMD is a godsend, but my money goes straight to AMD. This corruption is something my hard earned money will not support.

Perhaps Intel need to get off their fat ass, go back to school and realise how to really compete...... innovate.

quote: I'm sure OEM's useage of AMD processors would have soared if not for the fact that Intel were so corrupt.

And you don't think the fact that AMD couldn't make enough processors to satisfy the demand had anything to do with it...?

quote: If you weren't so small minded, you would realise that it was Intel's anti-competitveness that caused AMD to stop being as competitive as they once were.

More likely it was an Intel internal political battle, caused by strong competition from AMD, that ended in a renewed focus on a better product approach. This allowed Intel to employ its vastly superior process technology.

It's pretty simple: Intel has superior R&D resources, both in design and manufacturing, and the current state of things is the natural result of that superiority. The reason why AMD had the best product for a period of time was partly caused by a great engineering idea from AMD, but mostly caused by mistakes and power plays inside Intel.

I'd say most of us who are interested in such things think it's common knowledge that Intel used underhanded tactics to hold Amd back a little. It's really hard to say how much that effected them overall as it's speculation at best. STILL, it's probably safe to say that AMD would have been in a better position to weather the storm that followed after the core2 launch if Intel had been doing things fairly.